On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:12:25 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:
| I'm looking for companies that can, given a list of packages/RPMs/
| whatever, create a distribution and provide some amount of support for
| it (perhaps along the lines of monitoring CERT/mailing lists/etc,
| looking for the intersection of any critical bug reports with said
| list of packages, applying appropriate/agreed-on fixes/updates, and
| performing a modicum of testing on the result).
|
| I've so far identified rPath, Owl River and Sine Nomine. Montavista
| and Timesys seem to be out of our league as we don't need a new BSP
| for some arcane processor environment-- this would just be for a
| typical x86 pc-like box.
|
| Anyone know of others?

Timesys does have x86 BSPs. I'm sure Montavista does as well. I don't
understand how your need rules them out. Do you need to make a distribution
in some unusual way and need to contract the work involved?

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / spamtrap-2008-04-04-1838@ipal.net |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

I'm looking for companies that support a custom Linux distribution by
being given a list of packages/RPMs/whatever and creating a
distribution (and providing on-going support for this customized
distribution).

As far as I've been able to determine from discussions with sales
folks at both companies, supporting custom distributions is not the
core competency of Timesys or Montavista; they support a generic
distribution for a given processor/architecture. If you have a
contact at either of these companies that says otherwise, I'd like to
talk with them.

Jeff


On Apr 4, 7:41*pm, phil-news-nos...@ipal.net wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:12:25 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:
> | I'm looking for companies that can, given a list of packages/RPMs/
> | whatever, create a distribution and provide some amount of support for
> | it (perhaps along the lines of monitoring CERT/mailing lists/etc,
> | looking for the intersection of any critical bug reports with said
> | list of packages, applying appropriate/agreed-on fixes/updates, and
> | performing a modicum of testing on the result).
> |
>
> Timesys does have x86 BSPs. *I'm sure Montavista does as well. *I don't
> understand how your need rules them out. *Do you need to make a distribution
> in some unusual way and need to contract the work involved?
>

I'm looking for companies that support a custom Linux distribution by
being given a list of packages/RPMs/whatever and creating a
distribution (and providing on-going support for this customized
distribution).

As far as I've been able to determine from discussions with sales
folks at both companies, supporting custom distributions is not the
core competency of Timesys or Montavista; they support a generic
distribution for a given processor/architecture. If you have a
contact at either of these companies that says otherwise, I'd like to
talk with them.

Jeff

On Apr 4, 7:41*pm, phil-news-nos...@ipal.net wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Apr 2008 13:12:25 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:
> | I'm looking for companies that can, given a list of packages/RPMs/
> | whatever, create a distribution and provide some amount of support for
> | it (perhaps along the lines of monitoring CERT/mailing lists/etc,
> | looking for the intersection of any critical bug reports with said
> | list of packages, applying appropriate/agreed-on fixes/updates, and
> | performing a modicum of testing on the result).
> |
>
> Timesys does have x86 BSPs. *I'm sure Montavista does as well. *I don't
> understand how your need rules them out. *Do you need to make a distribution
> in some unusual way and need to contract the work involved?

On Sun, 6 Apr 2008 08:49:38 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:

| I'm looking for companies that support a custom Linux distribution by
| being given a list of packages/RPMs/whatever and creating a
| distribution (and providing on-going support for this customized
| distribution).
|
| As far as I've been able to determine from discussions with sales
| folks at both companies, supporting custom distributions is not the
| core competency of Timesys or Montavista; they support a generic
| distribution for a given processor/architecture. If you have a
| contact at either of these companies that says otherwise, I'd like to
| talk with them.

OK. That sounds like something that will be quite a bit more expensive
since it would involve someone spending the time to prepare, build, test
and package this, all for just one customer.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / spamtrap-2008-04-06-1744@ipal.net |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

On Sun, 6 Apr 2008 08:49:38 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:

| I'm looking for companies that support a custom Linux distribution by
| being given a list of packages/RPMs/whatever and creating a
| distribution (and providing on-going support for this customized
| distribution).

What are you expecting as a deliverable? Normally a distribution is a
set of packages you can install (or not) as you choose. Do you want to
be able to install this custom distribution? Or do you want a flash
image of it?

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / spamtrap-2008-04-06-1935@ipal.net |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

As this distribution would be customized to our needs, it would be
installed in its entirety. The distribution would need to be
contained on some sort of media that could be easily shipped/mailed/
carried (e.g., on a DVD, flash-drive, etc.). It would also need to be
standalone and/or be supported by some sort of bootloader/live-CD
mechanism to facilitate installation on a target system that might be
devoid of any software.

Oh, and the company would need to pass some modicum of quality/process
inspection (the target system is subject to rigorous oversight by a
government agency), so hiring a bright high school kid (or equivalent)
to do this isn't going to cut it (if that route were sufficient, I'd
do it myself).


On Apr 6, 8:36 pm, phil-news-nos...@ipal.net wrote:
> On Sun, 6 Apr 2008 08:49:38 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:
>
> | I'm looking for companies that support a custom Linux distribution by
> | being given a list of packages/RPMs/whatever and creating a
> | distribution (and providing on-going support for this customized
> | distribution).
>
> What are you expecting as a deliverable? Normally a distribution is a
> set of packages you can install (or not) as you choose. Do you want to
> be able to install this custom distribution? Or do you want a flash
> image of it?

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 06:11:45 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:

| As this distribution would be customized to our needs, it would be
| installed in its entirety. The distribution would need to be
| contained on some sort of media that could be easily shipped/mailed/
| carried (e.g., on a DVD, flash-drive, etc.). It would also need to be
| standalone and/or be supported by some sort of bootloader/live-CD
| mechanism to facilitate installation on a target system that might be
| devoid of any software.

Do you have your own application to integrate with it? If the deliverable
is a complete flash image, then you need to provide your application to
the company so they can have it integrated for you.


| Oh, and the company would need to pass some modicum of quality/process
| inspection (the target system is subject to rigorous oversight by a
| government agency), so hiring a bright high school kid (or equivalent)
| to do this isn't going to cut it (if that route were sufficient, I'd
| do it myself).

So, basically, you need a company that is doing more than just a "one off"
job for this, but has in place the processes to deal with it, including
the testing phase. Still sounds expensive to me.

Are you going to send your hardware to this company to ensure their test
processes are applied correctly?

Are you going to send your application to this company so they can do the
integration for you?

How did you test your application to be sure it does what you expect it
to do, if you don't yet have a distribution to do this testing on?

And, most importantly, are there enough of you around to make this a
viable business model for enough companies to support this market with
a reasonable level of competition to keep pricing low enough to not
cause the market to evaporate?

It seems to me your needs are in conflict. You want a company that would
treat it as "business as usual". Yet, you also want it to be handled with
focused attention. That's not to say it can't be done. It just doesn't
seem to be a big enough market to support much availability, yet.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / spamtrap-2008-04-07-0847@ipal.net |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

Perhaps you missed that I've already identified companies that do this
(rPath, Owl River, Sine Nomine, etc.). I want to make sure that any
other obvious contenders are on our RFP list.

Jeff



On Apr 7, 10:01 am, phil-news-nos...@ipal.net wrote:
> It seems to me your needs are in conflict. You want a company that would
> treat it as "business as usual". Yet, you also want it to be handled with
> focused attention. That's not to say it can't be done. It just doesn't
> seem to be a big enough market to support much availability, yet.
>

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 10:33:41 -0700 (PDT) Jeff Frontz wrote:

| Perhaps you missed that I've already identified companies that do this
| (rPath, Owl River, Sine Nomine, etc.). I want to make sure that any
| other obvious contenders are on our RFP list.

I hope you get what you are expecting from them. I just don't see much of
a market other than for consulting work, for this kind of thing. I would
not refer to what you are looking for as a "distribution". Instead, I would
call it something like an "integration".

At first I did not grasp what you were really looking for, and I focused on
the distinction between x86 based boards and PCs themselves vs. those based
on other CPU architectures; I was trying to point out that what Timesys and
Montavista offer do include both. I used to work for Timesys and worked on
both. When I was there, I don't recall any customers ever asking for us to
to build a custom deliverable like a flash image (I didn't see all customer
requests, so it's always possible some did). But, there were cases where a
customer would ask for a package to be added that was not already included.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / spamtrap-2008-04-07-1327@ipal.net |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|